Can you specify the law that he broke that has prison time?
(I think he broke the emoluments clause of the constitution, but there is no associated law or prison sentence. )
the googles tells me that there are 8 trump associates arrested or convicted of a crime, which iâm sure donald is guilty of all of them.
his handling of covid should be criminal too, but there is likely no specific crime there.
Iâm pretty sure that, in the US, being associated with someone who commits a crime is not a crime.
they were following trumpâs orders.
Who is âtheyâ?
Bannon is charged with fraud on something he did after leaving the WH.
Manafort was convicted of stuff he did before he started working for Trump.
Same with Gates.
George Nader was convicted on child porn.
George Papadopoulos was so far down the food chain that itâs highly unlikely Trump ever told him to do anything.
Trump didnât tell Michael Flynn to lie to the FBI. Simply talking to the Russians was politically embarrassing, but not illegal.
Roger Stone lied to congress. There wonât be any emails or phone recordings of Trump telling him to do that. It was just understood.
That leaves Michael Cohen. He will testify that Trump broke campaign finance laws by using campaign funds for hush money. There may be enough of a paper trail to make that stick. Cohen also lied to congress, but like Stone, there wonât be any hard evidence proving that Trump told him to do it. (Iâm not even sure that Trump pushed Cohen to keep working on the Moscow project. Cohen could have been mostly free lancing on that.)
I think Trump really is a crook. Iâm sure he evaded taxes with the shell corporation his father set up. Time has run out on that. I also think he hires lawyers who make sure he has plausible deniability. If he had testified alone to Mueller, he probably would have committed perjury, but his lawyers made sure he replied in writing and they had time to edit his statements.
If Biden wants to get re-elected in 4 years, he probably shouldnât pardon Trump. Ford always felt like his pardon of Nixon cost him the 1976 election.
I think Ford knew that consequence was most likely.
However, that particular sacrifice resulted in the remaining years being focused on other issues/topics that needed to be addressed. Without the Nixon pardon, political focus would be drawn toward doing more in that arena (one of my biggest complaints with the House on the first impeachmentâdid they not realize that something major was looming?).
I wonder how Congressional responses wouldâve been different if the focus was on getting more info on the virus and what itâd take to combat it (instead of relying on the Executive branch to make the decisions and ask Congress for the approval).
Blanket pardon like Nixon? No, Nixon resigned. Trump did not. If Trump is indicted, Biden should evaluate cost/benefit. I am having a hard time imagining it would land on a pardon, but who knows.
interesting I never thought of this before. Biden is always talking about bringing the country together. this might be a good first step
Biden canât for any or at least some of the ongoing existing investigations as they are not federal investigations.
Federalism strikes again!
he should try anyway and then fail, win-win haha!
that could be clever
âI did all I could! I tried, I swear!â
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so machevelian!
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